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Comment by throw0101d | Hacker News Reader

>> Did everybody already forget only a month ago it was revealed Chinese hackers had access to US Treasury computers including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's own?

> I find it strange that neither activists nor politicians nor journalists cared about that enough to make it a continuous news cycle.

Because (a) that was a month ago and that's a long time given recent events. And (b), it's implicit that someone 'inappropriate' having access is a bad thing, but with Trump/Musk/DOGE it's being done on purpose.

It's the purposeful part that's at issue now.

There are people who have reportedly just graduated high school that have root-level access to things:

* https://futurism.com/elon-kids-gutting-opm-doge

Beside being party loyalists, do they have any kind of qualifications?

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Are you saying, a potus appointed commission for auditing government system is worse than a chinese backdoor in treasury department, who's level of access was unknown?

No one invited the Chinese through the front door.

If you can’t understand that difference, you’re missing something very critical.

One is serious because a foreign adversary is compromising us; the other is serious because we are apparently designing the compromise ourselves via the whims of a demagogue.

Yes. Someone without clearance nor congress approval running around with a sledgehammer is a lot more an immediate issue than a long term saboteur. We can deal with both, but let's make priorities.

"if the president does it, it's not illegal" ok Nixon.

Cosigned by the Supreme Court of The United States, in 2024.

> Are you saying, a potus appointed commission for auditing government system […]

You don't need read-write access for auditing. You don't need root/admin-level privileges.

Do they really have write access though?

So far the only evidence of that is a wired article [1] with anonymous sources, even those source were not 100% sure about it.

Since then wired has posted another article [2] claiming the access have been revoked after announcements from senior officials, which again is from anonymous sources.

I'm really skeptical of these anonymous sources tbh.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-department-doge-marko-e...

Ageist and just parroting what the media says.

I'm surprised you didn't throw in jabs like "racist misogynistic eugenicist" like some reports...

I mean, Luke Farritor used some variety of AI to translate ancient scrolls and won an award for it:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-21-year-old-u...

> I mean, Luke Farritor used some variety of AI to translate ancient scrolls and won an award for it:

Did the ancient scrolls involved accounting ledgers? Because some kind of auditing experience would be useful to figure out how where Treasury or USAid payments went.

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